


Director's Fury and Agents' Wraith

by ACPL



Series: Devil's Spawn [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), others - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 23:51:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18271616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACPL/pseuds/ACPL





	Director's Fury and Agents' Wraith

"I could kill you where you stand."

Director Fury was not known for fooling around. Nor was he known for taking kindly to uninvited guests in his office. Or surprises in general and as a concept, unless he was on the delivering end of them. The young woman turned to face him with a serene expression on her face however, albeit bearing an air of bemused consideration.

"That is statistically unlikely, sir. Besides, the fact that I remain standing proofs sufficiently that even if you indeed  _could_  – and that is a big if – you know too well that such action would put us both into thoroughly unenviable positions. There's a reason they started saying you shouldn't shoot the messenger."

"A messenger, huh," Fury huffed, unimpressed, as he went to sit down at his desk. Shuffling the papers that laid there, he kept his eye down.

"You have four minutes."

She was clearly unfazed by his tone.

"It's been a while since I've done this," she frowned slightly. "Do I quote ad verbatim?  _You do your thing your way and we do our thing our way. Nobody steps on anybody's toes and everybody is happy. Balance is essential, you know that better than anyone, Director._ "

He raised his gaze at that.

"That was ad verbatim. You know Latin, you should know what those words mean."

"I might have taken some liberties," she admitted with a nonchalant shrug, playing idly with her glove. "I am not entirely comfortable with half of the words that were used in the original version, and the other half I didn't know. I think they were improved or straight out made up to emphasise the point. Also, you said four minutes. I can't cram half an hour of obscenities into that time-frame, but I can sum it up in three sentences if I leave out the juicy bits."

He raised his eyebrow slightly.

"Half an hour?"

That received another shrug.

"We are talking about someone who can swear her way through five dictionaries in one take. It's impressive breath control, really," she trailed off a little. "And the creativity is just as impressive as the delivery, as you know. And I must say the little FUBAR extempore that your people pulled on us was clearly  _really_  inspiring."

"We do things  _our_  way," he retorted, his expression darkening. "And you might want to check your tone, agent."

She gave no indication on planning to do so in the foreseeable future.

"I've always thought it was a little funny, you know. Yours is an agency run by a spy, with a soldier as his second in command. And my voice is perfectly fine, but your concern is noted and appreciated."

This time he stood up to meet her gaze.

"I run my shop as I see fit. It happens to be opposite to yours. Sad story. You think your way's any better? You think it makes any  _difference_? Do you?"

She tilted her head to watch his face – revealing hers in return. Both of them remained blank, though upon a closer inspection, Fury seemed curious, if anything, and hers held an air of amusement.

"I cannot tell you the answers to that, Director, for I do not know them. All I can tell you is which one I chose. And I can tell you I based my choice on whom I  _wanted_  to be as opposed to who I  _was_. Which, as you can probably imagine, illustrates the  _good_  and  _bad_  point pretty colourfully."

"Good and bad," he scoffed scornfully. "Right or wrong. What are you, twelve?"

She watched him intently as he waited for the answer he didn't think was coming, and not for the first time he found his skin prickle under her scrutinising gaze. He would deny and kick and scream and possibly shoot a few people including himself before admitting to it but sometimes, usually when he said something – and the fact he couldn't quite figure out the trigger pattern was equally infuriating – she would fix him with this look, like he was a blob from the ocean floor and she was regarding him thoughtfully, weighing the pros and cons of keeping him, mildly curious about whether he can breathe out of water – and perfectly content to wait to see. Nick Fury did not get where he was by allowing people to look at him like he was merely a bunch of atoms, but this young woman occasionally looked at him like she actually  _knew_  he was – and worse, the look always made him  _feel_  like nothing but.

"Maria Hill is not twelve, yet she seems to have no problems operating within those concepts," she spoke out suddenly, blinking and shifting away slightly. Fury pulled back and regrouped, sensing an opening.

"Hill was not in charge of the botched mission," he barked out.

She nodded solemnly, much to his disdain.

"I know," she said simply, "and don't think I didn't notice it's a  _botched mission_  now. Fascinating, watching progress in, well,  _progress_ , is it not."

Her eyes were full of mischief now and Fury found himself thoroughly unamused. But she clearly accomplished what she came here to do, for she turned slowly and made for the door. Before she could say her goodbyes however, Fury spoke. Infuriating as he found her, it was rare, nowadays, to come across people who knew the difference between fear and respect when it came to him. It was rare to come across people who actually  _heard_  what he was saying – Romanoff did, sometimes, but she was his agent, still. The company of people who didn't see him as a SHIELD Director, as a former spy, but merely as an underwater blob, was refreshing.

"How could you fight for something you don't believe is good?"

His question could have been taken as rhetorical, but it stopped her dead in her tracks halfway to the door. When she turned, her face was a perfect mask of delicately arranged muscles that gave away just the right amount of carefully picked emotions.

"You tell me. Good and bad is something they teach you when you're a child," she said, her voice perfectly unconcerned. "Where I come from, good is just another word for  _sufficient_ , and bad for  _not enough_. They are not some great beings from fairy tales." She waved her hand around, encompassing the baffling concept of children's stories. "Fairy tales teach you what's  _right_  and what's  _wrong_ ," her voice picked up slightly, shedding the dispassionate tone, "but then people grow up and realise they'd rather be the witch, realise they feel sorry for the slain, misunderstood dragon, because that's where the  _fun_  is. In the recklessness. In the freedom. In the lack of concern of consequences. For the longest time, I thought my father's will was  _right_  and then I spent as long trying to prove the opposite. Now?" She paused lightly and he kept silent, opting instead to watch her carefully. Her eyes were now clouded grey, distant, a far cry from their usual green hazel colour. "Now I envy the people who can choose between right and wrong, having been left on the borderlines with the cherished choice of  _wrong_  and  _less wrong_  or whatever else is left after  _right_  decided not to show, because it was too long a walk and we are knee-deep in dirt and mud." She grew silent again, but again he did not speak, knowing she wasn't done yet. When she met his eye again, hers were back to their usual airy hazel. "Good and bad is a matter of perspective. Where do  _you_  stand, Nick?"

"Between people and everything else," he answered gravely and she blinked before laughing, a throaty, full laughter that turned into a cooing  _aww_. That made him bristle, because to a trained ear, it was not an affectionate  _aww_  – it was taunting, with a hint of disappointed, bitter disdain.

"It might be the people who are good at being bad who let evil in," she said. "But it's the people who are bad at being good that allow it to flourish."

She regarded him again, an echo of that sound visible on her face, before she smiled and it dissipated, like flipping a switch.

"Well either way, please stay clear of our toes when you venture in their vicinity. I strongly suspect the number of the philippics in your name I can endure is very limited and I'd rather not find out to just how many."

He frowned in response, to stop the chuckle from getting out.

"Who do you think you are," he growled lowly, though only half-heartedly. She laughed and suddenly he knew he said the wrong thing.

"You may know a lot of things, Director Fury," she said, "but you do not know everything." Her voice was playful, but it held a decisive edge of a surfacing warning. "And as well; you know what they say."

He knew a lot of what  _they_  said, whoever they were, but he raised an eyebrow in question nevertheless.

"Once you find out everything there is to know, you will die," she supplied casually with a half shrug and half a smile.

His eyes narrowed.

"I am sorry," he drawled out dangerously, "did you just threaten me?"

She smiled again and this time it was almost sad.

"Don't go digging in that graveyard, Nick," she said and it was soft, not threatening, but it still held the almost imperceptible warning edge. "There is nothing to find but ghosts and death." She looked up to meet his eye. "Nothing good ever came from waking up those who are buried."

* * *

"What about this one," she traced her fingers lightly across one of the many scars marring her friend's skin that was exposed in anticipation of the next outfit.

"A training accident," sounded the reply somewhat distantly. "Sword. I was distracted."

That was pretty hard to picture, which is why it got an incredulous laugh.

" _Distracted_? By what?"

She sighed mirthfully.

"By being disrespectful towards my teacher's methods. She didn't think my dance was a very dignified way to illustrate being light on my feet."

Natasha hummed her amusement as she moved on, her eyes catching a scar that curled around the left deltoid and continued across the whole length of the back. It was thin, a little messy around the edges, and as she rounded to see the back, she found a few more like that. She had seen those before, she realised as her eyes followed the faint lines, practically lost among the more pronounced ones. Her hand reached out and traced one of the pale paths, as if the touch would help jog her memory. Halfway through, she felt the back muscles stiffening under her finger, as if they realised  _which_  scar was followed, and that's when it came to her.

"A lash," she breathed out in realisation.

Her voice seemed to jolt her friend to life.

She heard a fast intake of breath and it gave her just enough time to remove her hand from where it froze midway through before a curtain of a t-shirt fell over, obscuring the view with decisive finality.

The gesture sent a clear signal, so she backed away slowly, bringing her hands up and meeting the hazel eyes with what she prayed was softness and understanding and calmness. For as long as they knew each other, they've been indulging in a game of push and pull, sometimes light-heartedly, sometimes not so much. The storm clouds swirling behind the usually clear eyes were gone in a blink and Natasha almost  _heard_  the walls slamming in place. A convincing smile followed.

"How's Hill?"

 _Pull it is,_  Natasha thought and matched the smile with a practised ease of a seasoned professional.

"Still a commander," she replied with a smirk that grew a hair at the chuckle that followed.

Much later, Natasha was cleaning her gun to the backdrop of some show when the outraged commentary of all its flaws faded into silence.

"It was the first time I spoke up against my father," she heard, and focused on the movement of her hands with increased devotion. "In public, anyway. He would never kill me. But he knew  _exactly_  where to draw the line."

When they first met, back when Red Room wasn't past yet, Natalia admired the young woman for her skills and her legacy. Later, when her life became a race against the clock, against the past, against herself, she envied her calm, her peace. The seeming easiness with which she moved between lives. And then, much later, after Barton had brought the Black Widow in and she started wiping off the red in her ledger one drop at a time, when she started seeing past her own pain and wounds, Natasha started seeing the clouds behind the light eyes for what they were. And not once she wondered that maybe having a past to run away from was a blessing. Being able to point a time-mark on the lifeline in her palm and say this is where I made a choice. This is where I turned my life around. This is where  _past_  became just that. It would still come knocking, occasionally, in the depths of night like a cold silk sheet, or in flashes of memories like a stab through the eye.

But the Red Room was gone, and she was no longer its subject. Her nightmares and ghosts were immaterial. She could never fathom living the life she did now – as did the woman sitting next to her – while at the same time living her past.  _Everything I do is to spite my father_ , her friend once told her, voice full of bitterness and ill humour,  _and I am only able to do so because he allowed it_. If Natasha tried,  _really tried_ , she would likely be able to find two little bumps of earth, somewhere in Russia, where her parents laid. Parents who were long before the Red Room, parents who would have probably given her an entirely different life, had theirs not been cut short. The woman sitting next to her had none of that. No dreams of a better if. Not even the words  _he would never kill me_  spoke in his favour – fool's consolation as that would be – because it was the first half of a sentence that ended with  _but he did make me hope he would._  You could turn your back to whom someone made you be, but you could never run away from who you were. She knew the stories behind enough of her friend's scars to be able to make an educated estimate of their age – and she noticed that one of the faded thin lines went  _under_  the one she for a fact knew was obtained at nine years of age.  _An arrow graze_ , she chuckled amusedly as she told the tale with the lightness of someone for whom getting shot at was a treasured part of childhood, a light-hearted pass-time.

Natasha knew next to nothing of the influence a parent can have upon their child, but knowing Tony Stark taught her enough. And Tony's scars were all conceptual, psychological. Next to her sat a woman who's body was a canvas to her father's persecution. Those thin, half-faded scars and all others that she wouldn't laugh about told a story of a man who kicked his eight-year-old child for speaking her mind and then lashed her as a punishment, stopping only when he knew the next strike would force the last breath out of her tiny, bloodied broken body.

On a good day, there were jokes about being devil's spawn, about her father being the demon incarnate. People who knew no better laughed and nodded their oblivious agreement along with her jesting nature. But Natasha was one of the very few people who  _did_  know better.

When they first met, she would watch with near venerance how the Demon's youngest carried herself, despite being a couple of years older. Assuredness flowed through every fluid movement and every word from her mouth rang with unquestionable authority. Natasha was used to instilling fear into her targets, but the League's golden child could make people feel their own expandability with a mere unconcerned look.  _I am not here to kill you_ , were the first words she told her, laced with unapologetic amusement,  _if Ra's al-Ghul wished you dead, that is what you would be._

Later, when she escaped the Red Room, she sought her friend out, asking for a way in. The League of Assassins was a name uttered with horrified reverence in her circles, regardless of whether people believed it existed or not; it was a term with an unshakable reputation for it's ruthless efficiency and taking care of their own. She would be safe from the Red Room among them, she thought, so she reached out to her only friend at the time. The young al-Ghul turned her down mercilessly, angered by the request to a degree Natasha couldn't comprehend at the time, and they parted on bitter terms.  _The League does not give second chances, Natalia_ , she spat with so much venom the older girl reflexively took a step back.  _It cannot offer you what you seek. And my father has killed people for far less than wasting his time._

Natasha saw them in action once, when they just-so beat her to her target. Two hooded figures swooped by her effortlessly and were out of the room where she was headed in less than a minute, walking by her again as if she were a piece of furniture. One of the figures met her eyes as she passed, however, and it took Natasha the yells of the dead man's guards to snap out of the trance the dark brown orbs put her in. They were wild, cold and just as assured and impressive as her friend's. When she returned to her safe-house, she found a note stuck to the inside of her door by an arrow with red wings. _Good hunting_ , it read in an elegant script, and when she told her friend, months later, the woman laughed a full-bellied laugh, overflowing with mirth in a way Natasha'd never seen her. After she took a steadying breath and wiped the tears of joy from her eyes, she looked at Natasha with a serious face and asked if she kept the note and the arrow. Upon receiving a positive answer, she nodded solemnly and asked her to retrieve them and hold them up next to her face. Natasha did as she was told, unsure about the gravity of the actions, and it took her by complete surprise when the other woman simply snapped a picture and smiled as she checked it.  _The proof Warith al-Ghul has a sense of humour_ , she chuckled as she pocketed the phone.


End file.
